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ORLANDO — If you are hopeful that the consumer protections in the health care reform law actually wind up benefiting consumers more than the insurance industry, please send a thank-you note to executives at UnitedHealth Group, the largest U.S. health insurer.
United announced Tuesday morning that its third-quarter profit jumped 23% — much more than investors and analysts had expected — largely because it spent far less of its customers’ premiums on medical care than it did this time last year. When an insurance company spends less of every premium dollar it takes in on medical care, it has more left over to reward shareholders and a handful of senior managers who already are among the highest-paid executives on the planet.
United’s announcement is cause for joy because maybe, just maybe, the nation’s state insurance commissioners — whom Congress gave the responsibility of determining how major parts of the new law will be implemented — will finally realize that they don’t need to give the big insurers the truck-sized loopholes they have been lobbying so hard for over the past several weeks.
It could turn out that UnitedHealth will help consumers the same way the nation’s second largest insurer, WellPoint, did several months ago when it announced that it was hiking premiums as much as 37% for many of its customers in California. The news coverage of that proposed increase so outraged members of Congress that they mustered the gumption to finally pass a reform bill that, until then, seemed to be on life support.
I am writing this between meetings at the fall conference of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) here in Orlando. I am one of 28 people selected by the NAIC to represent the interests of consumers. The insurance industry and other special interests are represented here by more than a thousand lobbyists. Like us, they are pacing the hallways waiting to pounce on the commissioners when they emerge from their “regulator-to-regulator” meetings that are closed to the public and the media. It is at these closed-door meetings that some of the most important discussions are taking place, and decisions are being made.
One of the most consumer-friendly provisions of the reform law requires that, beginning next year, insurers will have to spend at least 80 percent of the revenues they receive in premiums from individual and small group customers on medical claims and activities that improve the quality of care. For their large group customers, they will have to spend at least 85%. Insurers that don’t meet those minimums will have to give rebates to their policyholders. Congress gave the NAIC the responsibility of writing regulations to implement this provision. Among other things, the NAIC has to determine which insurance company functions qualify as activities that improve the quality of care. We consumer representatives argue that the list of such activities should be short, and should include only those for which there is empirical evidence that they actually do improve care. The insurance industry’s lobbyists have tried to get the insurance commissioners to let them count just about all of their administrative functions as quality-improvement activities.
At its summer meeting in Seattle two months ago, the NAIC approved preliminary regulations that represented a reasonable compromise between our positions and those of the industry. The big, for-profit insurers — including United and WellPoint — were not at all happy, so in the days leading up to this meeting in Orlando, they dispatched teams of lobbyists to state capitols across the country to cajole and threaten commissioners into seeing things their way. As I write in my upcoming book, Deadly Spin, the insurance industry is especially adept at planning and carrying out fear-mongering campaigns. The central message of the lobbyists who were deployed from coast to coast as part of their most recent fear-mongering campaign is that they will stop covering people in states where they don’t think they can make the profits Wall Street expects them to make if the new “medical loss ratio” (MLR) rules don’t cut them enough slack. (Insurers consider the amount of money they pay out in medical claims to be a loss.) It is the equivilent of a spoiled brat threatening to take his marbles and go home if he doesn’t get to play the game by his own rules. The difference, of course, is that we are dealing not with marbles here, but with people’s lives.
The All-Important “Medical Loss Ratio”
During my years as a corporate executive at CIGNA, another one of the big for-profit insurers, one of the things I did was to explain to the financial media why the company’s MLR went up or down during a specific period of time. There is constant pressure from investors and Wall Street analysts for insurance company executives to take whatever means are necessary to keep pushing the MLR lower and lower. If they don’t succeed, they get punished, often severely, in the stock market. Aetna’s stock price once fell more than 20% in a single day after executives disclosed that the company had spent slightly more on medical claims during the most recent quarter than in a previous period. What triggered the “sell” alarm was the company’s announcement that its first quarter MLR increased to 79.4% from 77.9% the previous year.
Insurance company executives will never forget the beating that Aetna took that day. Not only did the company’s market cap shrink, but so did the stock options held by Aetna’s senior executives. The CEO alone lost millions in compensation by reporting an MLR that didn’t meet Wall Street’s expectations.
Insurance Companies Want to Keep the Champaign Corks Popping
That lesson certainly was not lost on United’s executives. One of the main reasons why the company was able to exceed Wall Street’s profit expectations for the third quarter that just ended was its ability to push its commercial-segment MLR, which comprises most of its customers, much lower than usual. It dropped a whopping 3.7 percentage points to 80.9%. United, and the other big for-profits, reported even bigger drops during the second quarter of this year. These are the results that bring out the champagne on Wall Street, when you reduce the amount you spend on medical care and make your customers pay more.
Insurers sent their lobbyists across the country to meet personally with the insurance commissioners (and lobbyists are as thick as thieves here in Orlando) because they want the commissioners to give them the slack they need to continue being able to push their MLRs down to what will be a legal minimum next year. The more they can get the commissioners to write the often obscure but critically important rules in their favor — even if those rules violate the health care reform statute — the happier it will make Wall Street. That is what is really going on here. It is as simple as that.
The timing of United’s embarrassment of riches, however, is causing great concern on Wall Street. Investors and analysts are keeping up with what is going on in Orlando more than anyone except perhaps insurance company executives. They know that the commissioners are expected to complete their work on the MLR regulations Thursday morning and send their recommendations to the Secretary of Health and Human Services, as the law stipulates. In a report Tuesday morning, Carl McDonald of Citigroup Investment Research wrote that United’s impressive numbers “couldn’t come at a worse time politically. We’re at a critical time juncture, as the Health and Human Services Secretary will soon provide final minimum MLR guidance and decide how often to grant MLR waivers. United beating its initial earnings guidance this year by over $1.6 billion pre-tax certainly doesn’t help the industry’s cause.”
You’re right, Carl. It is my pleasure to share your thoughts and the news about United’s big increase in earnings, made possible by the big decrease in its MLR, with all the commissioners down here in Orlando. By about noon on Thursday, we’ll find out whose side the commissioners are really on: consumers, whose interests by law they are supposed to protect, or insurance company executives and investors, who are far more interested in the value of stock options and earnings per share than they are with the health and well-being of their customers.
(This also appeared on the Center for Media and Democracy’s Web site.)

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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

The Big Music Machine is pulling out the big guns this week. Superstars only — indie upstarts need not apply. Kings of Leon preach the glory of rock ‘n’ roll, Taylor Swift shares some more pages from her diary, Elton John gives props to his hero, Sugarland has an ’80s flashback, and Shakira is a hot, bilingual eclectic mess. And that’s a good thing.
WATCH: Check out this week’s must-play pick, Kings of Leon.
PLAY: Kings of Leon, “Come Around Sundown”
There’s no turning back for Kings of Leon. Anything less than full rock ‘n’ roll domination would be considered a failure after their 2008 breakthrough, “Come by the Night.” And let there be no doubt, the Followill family is up for the challenge. “Come Around Sundown” is a rare thing these days: a real rock record full of sweat, bravado, and big dreams. And Kings of Leon are an even more endangered species — a rock band that matters. Stay tuned for the revolution.
WATCH the video for Kings of Leon’s single “Radioactive.”
SKIP: Taylor Swift, “Speak Now”
It’s hard to say anything negative about a hugely popular, multi-platinum artist without sounding stubbornly contrarian or like a dude with a mouthful of sour grapes. Still, I’m done with Taylor Swift’s diary. It’s full of cliches and puppy dog/moonbeam tales. Maybe her writing will get deeper in a few years. Until then, I’d rather read my old high school yearbook inscriptions. Hey, whatever happened to Jodi Reed? She wrote some great poetry.
WATCH the video for Taylor Swift’s single “Mine.”
PLAY: Elton John & Leon Russell, “The Union”
Once upon a time in the ’70s, a young Elton John was the opening act for his hero, Leon Russell, a respected player with a loyal but small following. In the 40 years since, Russell’s opening act became a bigger star than he could ever have hoped. Now Elton wants to share some of the spotlight with his hero. It’s a big win for Russell, but it’s perhaps a bigger win for Elton John, who has spent much of the last two decades lost in the land of schmaltz. Leon Russell’s Oklahoma cool and barroom sensibilities have rubbed off on the piano man. The result is one of the best recordings Elton John has delivered since . . . his days opening for Leon Russell.
WATCH Elton John & Leon Russell discuss the making of “The Union.”
PLAY: Shakira, “Sale el Sol”
Ignore the Silly Bandz Shakira wears on the cover of “Sale el Sol.” This is no bid for tween fans. Shakira has always been crazysexycool, but this time she brings it down a notch from the oversexed electro-pop of “She Wolf.” “Sale el Sol” is a bilingual grab bag of hip-hop, merengue, and Latin romance that’s sexy, fun, and, dare I say, a bit more grownup.
WATCH the video for Shakira’s single “Loca,” featuring Dizzee Rascal.
PLAY: Sugarland, “The Incredible Machine”
There are some albums you dig despite yourself — that copy of “Rio,” the “Footloose” soundtrack, or those early ’80s synth power ballad records sitting in your closet. Sugarland’s Jennifer Nettles and Kristian Bush undoubtedly are keeping those same records in their collections too. They’re also not afraid to use them for inspiration, as they push country pop out of its comfort zone. The result is an album every bit as commercial as those ’80s hits — and every bit as guilty a pleasure. Sugarland has brought back the ’80s with a twang.
WATCH the video for Sugarland’s single “Stuck Like Glue.”

Follow Shawn Amos on Twitter:
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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

The Great Recession of 2007-2009 may have officially ended in mid-2009 according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, but a deep recession remains in the nation’s labor markets with very high levels of official unemployment, underemployment, and hidden unemployment. The economic burdens of the Great Recession have been very unevenly shared among U.S. workers. College educated workers (especially professionals, women, and those over 30 years old) have fared the best. The total number of college educated workers holding jobs requiring four year college degrees did not decline between 2007 immediately prior to the recession and 2010.
Young college educated workers, particularly those 25 and under, however, have not fared very well over the past three years. They have experienced rising joblessness, underemployment, and malemployment problems (i.e. working in jobs that do not require a college degree). During the January-August period of 2010, we estimate that fewer than 50 of every 100 young B.A.-holders held a job requiring a college degree.
The labor market difficulties of many young bachelor degree holders in the U.S. can best be seen in the types of jobs in which they were employed in the first eight months of the current calendar year. Of the 20 individual occupations employing the largest number of young, college graduates (25 and under), seven typically did not require any type of college degree to be employed. There were 175,000 young college graduates working as cashiers, retail clerks, and customer service representatives versus only 146,000 employed in all computer professional professions and all types of engineers combined. There were twice as many four year college graduates working as waiters, waitresses, and bartenders (80,000) as there were engineers (37,000). There were more college graduates working in office related jobs and as bank tellers than in all computer professional jobs (148,000 vs. 109,000).
The likelihood that young bachelor degree holders will end up being employed in a college labor market job is not a random event. Obtaining employment in jobs requiring college degrees has been found to be associated with the majors of new college graduates (engineering, health, business, computer science majors fare better), those who had strong reading and math skills at entry into college, those living in low unemployment states, and having paid work experience in college-related jobs prior to graduation. Having parents who are employed college graduates also appears to matter by providing referrals to appropriate jobs.
This growing problem of malemployment and joblessness among young college graduates has a number of dire economic effects on both the graduates themselves and many other young adults across the country. Those college graduates working in jobs that do not require college degrees are earning substantially less per week (30-40 percent less) than their peers who work in jobs that require college degrees. These substantially lower weekly earnings reduce the private and social economic return to college education for such individuals to close to zero. The presence of large numbers of jobless and malemployed young college graduates provides adverse signals to younger high school students contemplating whether to attend college especially among males living in lower income communities. The non-college labor market jobs obtained by these young graduates displace less educated young adults from employment, increasing joblessness among young adults with only a year or two of college or among high school graduates. This rising degree of malemployment among young college graduates, thus, has adverse consequences on the rest of society, pushing down the growth of real output and employment, wages, and earnings of the non-college educated. There is a critical need for national, state, and local political and educational policymakers and administrators to address this growing labor market problem.
Prepared by: Andrew Sum and Paul Harrington, Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

“Biography is the falsest of arts,” wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald in one of his many notebooks. Fitzgerald blamed the biographer of course, the summation required by the biographical enterprise, and not the subject for this falseness. He blamed the biographer’s compunction to make men into movements, into types, archetypes, and so on.
Fitzgerald was partially right about this, I think. Yet every biographer knows, literary biographers in particular, our subjects are often unreliable witnesses, especially to what happens to them. They are unreliable largely because they believe so confidently that they are not. Our genre remains vibrant, to read and write, for this reason and also because: all art is adornment; we prefer adornment to bald fact; on all self-truths we practice self-surgery.
As a literary journalist who has interviewed and written about many contemporary writers, I can tell you that writers practice the strange art of willful obtusion. I can tell you they almost always prefer a beautiful lie to a banal truth. Who doesn’t, I guess. A writer’s archive is then just a rich depository of splayed and embellished truths; a writer’s archive is layered with lies in the same way a desert cliff is raked with variant sediment. The best that a literary biographer can do then (whether working with a living subject or a dead one) is corroborate statements, challenge stories, check sentiments, and cross-check dates. The best we can do is search through the facts and fictions and then forge them into an understanding that can be shared. A literary biography, then, is a writer’s understanding of a writer, shared.
My recent work inside the archives at The Huntington Library and at The John Hay Library at Brown University bears all these truths out. What’s remembered of my subject there by Lillian Hellman is half-remembered in a half-light. What’s remembered by Dorothy Parker, the same. What is remembered by William Faulkner is essentially that he and my subject went hunting on two occasions. William Carlos Williams recalls a brief editorial correspondence on a literary magazine he does not name. My subject’s sister brags that her brother was an excellent student. He was not.
Beyond all the trouble of sorting fact from fiction is the far greater one of composition — shaping a mass of dates and declarations into a story of a life that resembles some truth I want to tell. I’ve been driven to decide whether my subject was a major novelist or a minor one. Was his horrific car accident on a clear day in the middle of the California desert an accident after all? And finally, and most essentially, how does the boy of nine sequestered in his bedroom reading the great English and Russian novelists of the Nineteenth Century, fashion himself into one of the most engaging and peculiar modernists of the Twentieth Century?
Really, it’s this last question to which I’ve devoted myself and my biography. How does the amateur enthusiast become the professional, the craftsman become the artist? As I work to finish my first complete draft, I’ve posted above my desk one of my favorite sentences from the work-in-progress:
“A writer is what a writer does, not what he means to do.”
Isn’t that right and true? I think so. This gives the literary biographer some hope that what remains can be studied and tested, measured and admired.
In the end, I’ve come to believe that what makes the biography of a writer (or any person for that matter) crackle and pop (and also reliable and true) is knowing as many lies as truths — the lies they told to others, the lies others told of them, and most importantly, the lies they told themselves. In our lies live our truths.

Follow Joe Woodward on Twitter:
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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

My father, a mapmaker for the U.S. Army, had modest means but a keen interest in saving and investing. As a child of the Depression, he would have appreciated National Save for Retirement Week, which runs this week and offers everyone the opportunity to build a better financial future.
As a nation and as individuals we have a lot of work to do.
The worst economic crisis in 70 years showed us that market gains alone don’t create financial security. Median houses prices have dropped 20 percent since 2005. At the current rate, the U.S. would need nine more years to capture jobs lost during the recession. The average 401(k) balance is between $60,000 and $70,000 — nowhere near enough to support 20 to 30 years of retirement.
Job losses and economic insecurity make it tough to think about saving for the future. Compounding the problem is that too often we’re on our own when it comes to funding our financial futures.
And the consequences of not saving are profound. Nearly half of Americans say they will have to pare down their goals because they failed to save enough, according to a new TIAA-CREF survey. Moreover, almost two-thirds acknowledge they’re not saving enough for the future.
More than 80 percent of Americans want to save more, but are not very well informed or only somewhat informed about what it takes to accomplish that goal.
With that in mind, I encourage people to use the following roadmap as a starting point.
First, explore your options. Does your employer offer a retirement plan or, even better, offer to match the money you put in? Sign up for the plan, and save enough to be eligible for any matching contributions. If you employer doesn’t offer a retirement plan, consider an Individual Retirement Plan or Roth IRA to take advantage of tax breaks given to savings.
Next, seek objective advice tailored to your specific needs. While more than three-quarters of Americans rely on themselves to make household financial decisions, more than half of us admit we don’t know much about finance. Find an advisor who can help. Also take advantage of financial education opportunities at your job or a local community college. Make sure to ask your advisor about low-fee investments so that your money is going toward your retirement, not your broker’s.
Third, spread your money among different types of investments, like stocks, bonds, real estate, and money market accounts. Different types of investments tend to rise and fall at different times. So if one area loses value, your entire portfolio won’t suffer.
Fourth, aim to replace the income you earned when you were working so that you’ll always have enough money to cover basic needs. The average monthly Social Security payment for retired workers is about $1,600, while average monthly spending for individuals over age 65 exceeds $3,000.
Finally, don’t worry if you can’t act on all these strategies right now. The most important thing is to start saving. The earlier you begin the more your money can work for you. A 30-year-old saving approximately $250 a month can build a $350,000 nest egg by age 65. A 50-year-old would have to save about $1200 a month to achieve the same goal.
In my family, we were fortunate. While my father had modest means, his attention to saving and investing enabled our family to have a middle-class life.
It’s time to get serious about saving, which is essential for realizing our futures. Years from now, let’s look back on National Save for Retirement Week as the time when we got started.
Roger W. Ferguson, Jr., a former Vice Chairman of the Federal Reserve, is CEO of TIAA-CREF and a member of the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board.

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

In all of the conversation surrounding the oppressive and offensive “Don’t Ask; Don’t Tell” policy, there is an observation or conversation that continuously surprises me by its absence. At risk of oversimplifying but for the purpose of brevity, the case that is made to support both the policy itself and delaying its being overturned is totally based on a notion of “unit cohesiveness”. The argument goes that if gay and lesbian members of the services are not closeted, it will upset the stability of their units since some (straight) colleagues have such emotional reactions to homosexuality.
The question is: why is the onus for this problem placed on the shoulders of gays and lesbians and not on those of people who are emotionally reactive, bigoted, abusive, and/or committed to a kind of religious tyranny that demands that everyone participate in their belief system? Why are those responsible for the military protecting and inherently defending these reactions when it is the reactions themselves that ought so obviously to be eliminated? Gay and lesbian service members live with constant stress, are blocked from relating openly to their partners or even genuinely living their lives. Ultimately they can lose their careers and have their lives ruined. Yet, the “explanation” for the resistance of the current military establishment as well as the administration to either allow Judge Virginia Phillips’ ruling to stand or, indeed, to issue an Executive order to end its enforcement is that we must do whatever it takes to avoid any “disruption”.
It is striking to me that this is not universally recognized as upside down, at the very least.
Clearly, Judge Phillips does, in fact, see the obvious when she is presented with it. “The arguments by the government are vague…and belied by the evidence produced at trial.”
When I served in the military, it was very clear that the job of a service member included making sure that no emotion, reaction, or belief was allowed to interfere with doing one’s job. Without question, doing one’s job meant, above all else, guaranteeing cohesiveness within one’s unit. Anything that caused disruption would have been basis for disciplinary action immediately. When the military needed to be racially integrated, President Truman simply issued an order as Commander and Chief and declared that anyone who had a problem with that could have their resignations on his desk.
If there are to be problems with “cohesiveness”, it will not come from gay and lesbian soldiers. How do we know this? From the fact that they have been serving with rabidly homophobic colleagues for centuries and making sure it would not become an issue that could interfere with their service or that of their colleagues in spite of there being no legitimate justification for their bigotry. When Sam Nunn staged the photo-op’s in the cramped quarters of a submarine to stimulate homophobic panic and guarantee the passage of DADT seventeen years ago, what was left unexplored was how many of the sailors already occupying those bunks were, in fact, gay and sufficiently mature and able to control their emotions and impulses to assure that no problems arose. Gays and lesbians in the military have not only been given responsibility for themselves but for the emotions and beliefs of their misguided and uninformed colleagues.
The Pentagon study of the issues related to getting rid of DADT, slated to continue until December, is implicitly based entirely on the notion that military personnel with “issues” concerning homosexuality cannot be relied upon to handle them and therefore elaborate machinations will have to be considered, such as separate housing and shower facilities.
It does not seem like a particularly outrageous notion that we propose actually allowing, and indeed expecting, every member of the military to handle whatever feelings or beliefs they have that could interfere with “unit cohesiveness” even if they are serving with openly gay or lesbian colleagues. As a matter of fact, it would be appropriate to propose a new policy of “Don’t Ask: Don’t Tell”.
“If no one asks you if you have homophobic or negative feelings or reactions to any of your military colleagues, don’t tell them if you are biased against them and/or believe that there is something wrong with them. It does not ever need to be revealed.”
This DADT policy would actually be consistent with American values and the American Constitution.

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

In his New York Times article, “The Crisis of the Humanities Officially Arrives,” Stanley Fish makes the following statement, “if your criteria are productivity, efficiency and consumer satisfaction, it makes perfect sense to withdraw funds and material support from the humanities — which do not earn their keep and often draw the ire of a public suspicious of what humanities teachers do in the classroom — and leave standing programs that have a more obvious relationship to a state’s economic prosperity and produce results the man or woman in the street can recognize and appreciate.” This argument, by a so-called expert, reveals some of the dominant misconceptions concerning higher education.
The first obvious problem is that even though Fish has been a dean, a department chair, and a professor, he does not know that most undergraduate humanities programs make a huge profit, and in fact, these departments often rely on inexpensive contingent labor to teach most of their courses. Moreover, these classes often gain the highest level of student satisfaction because they are taught in small seminars that provide personal attention to individual students. Finally, it is untrue to state that the average citizen does not respect the humanities and the need to teach students how to write, read, and think effectively and critically.
So how can someone with so much experience at American universities misunderstand the basic reality of these institutions? Like so many educators, Fish relies on false ideological reasoning instead of hard facts when he analyzes his subject matter. Since he does not want to acknowledge that universities subsidize expensive graduate programs and research grants by draining funds from profit-making undergraduate Humanities and Social Science courses, Fish has to debase Liberal Arts classes and misrepresent what these programs actually do. The fact of the matter is that the most prevalent undergraduate courses in the Humanities are introductory writing and language classes that are usually taught by part-time faculty and graduate students. While these classes are much smaller than the average lower-division course a student takes, they are efficient and cost-effective because they rely on inexpensive non-tenure-track labor.
However, since research professors, like Fish, do not respect writing and language courses, they fail to acknowledge the vital roles these courses play in higher education. Not only do these classes save money, but they teach important skills that are recognized by the general public. Furthermore, since these courses are often required, they represent a steady source for departmental enrollments. In other words, while fewer students are taking majors in the Humanities, they are still taking courses in Humanities’ programs.
Perhaps if Fish had himself taken a more effective set of writing and communication courses, he would be more critical of his own ideological blind spots. Even though he is a visible critic of academic theory, he approaches the university from a purely theoretical perspective. Still, his analysis is helpful because it gives us insight to why so many administrators are making very bad decisions. For instance, the recent move to cut language programs at SUNY Albany show how universities do not recognize their own source of income and student satisfaction. As many studies have shown, small classes in the first two years of college are one of the key indicators of student retention, but since these courses are usually not taught by tenured faculty, they are easy to cut during times of budget stress.
Instead of calling for the end to the Humanities, we should celebrate and protect these areas, and to do this, we need to recognize who really pays the bills and delivers the goods in higher education. It turns out that it is the disrespected required courses that provide the cash and the student satisfaction for many colleges and universities. What schools should do, then, is to stop exploiting these educators and provide them with stable jobs and institutional respect. Not only could we turn the academic job market around by hiring more full-time instructors, but we could protect the research mission of universities by sustaining the real source of cash for these institutions.

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Everyone has been through some kind of hardship especially these days. Between the recession and the usual bad news if you haven’t had to deal with it I’m sure you know friends and family who have. It’s so easy in tough times to become distracted and just accept that things are not going to get better. Certain people have a gift of drawing strength from challenges and channeling them into something positive that others can learn from. Suzan Colon and Francesco Clark who happen to be best friends both recently published books about doing just that. Suzan Colon’s book Cherries in Winter: My Family’s Recipe for Hope in Hard Times is the most relevant food book I have read in a while. You will read it in one sitting and then you will keep it in your kitchen for the recipes. When Suzan lost her job in the magazine industry she used her time to explore her grandmother’s recipes from the Depression. It’s amazing to me that while so much has changed Suzan can connect with her grandmother by cooking and baking treats like scrumptious butter cookies.
The best way to connect with anyone in the past or the present is through food. Reading about her grandmother’s life along with Suzan’s current situation just puts things into perspective. Even if you don’t cook the best way to bond with someone is by having a meal with them. When people are at the table they are all sitting and at the same level. This is so meaningful and even more salient for someone like Francesco who is in a wheelchair.
Suzan first met Francesco Clark when they were working together at a magazine. In Walking Papers: The Accident that Changed My Life, and the Business that Got Me Back on My Feet Francesco writes about how he created Clark’s Botanicals. A few years back he dove into a pool unaware that it was shallow and was seriously injured and paralyzed from the neck down. Doctors told him he would never be able to speak above a whisper let alone breathe without a ventilator. Suzan, who practices yoga, taught Francesco how to breathe and meditate and before long he was breathing on his own.
It’s been a few years since the accident and besides doing five hours of physical therapy each day and being a spokesperson for the Christopher Reeve Foundation; he is the head of the thriving skin care company Clark’s Botanicals. After his accident Francesco noticed that he was unable to sweat out toxins from his skin, so with the help of his father who is a doctor he came out with a line of botanical skin care products. It’s mind blowing to me to see everything that Francesco has accomplished and that fact that everything he does tells his story and promotes stem cell research just makes it even more purposeful and inspiring.

Follow Jordana Zizmor on Twitter:
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Lt Col Victor Fehrenbach has served in the US Air Force for nearly two decades, flying in F15-E Strike Eagles in the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Having flown 88 combat missions, he has been honoured for heroism for an attack on an enemy ambush site under heavy fire.
He has been taking legal action to fight dismissal after being outed two years ago, while defending himself against allegations of sexual assault. If he is fired before his 20-year mark he will lose his pension.
“My parents were both air force. I grew up on an air force base.
“My case first came up in May 2008. I was basically outed by a third party. This person accused me of a crime, made up a false allegation.
“In the process of telling the truth and proving my innocence, I revealed my sexual orientations and that triggered things. Four months later I was served with the papers. In April 2009 I went before the administrative board.
“For almost another year it's gone through the administrative process.
“I've always thought 'don't ask, don't tell' was wrong and unconstitutional. But I just thought I would keep my private life private and do my military job. I never intended to out myself.
“A lot of people don't realise you can't tell your friends, you can't tell your mother. They might inadvertently say something. Somebody could overhear a conversation.
“Every day you are looking over your shoulder, wondering if you have said something wrong, if you are in a relationship you are constantly thinking of stories to explain if someone spots you together. You feel any day it could happen.
“I flew fighter jets. It required 100% concentration. Somebody else could talk to a buddy about personal problems. We just can't do that.
“I've got a lot of messages from people I've been in combat with. They don't care. They would go to war with me tomorrow.
“We are in the middle of two wars – we need every single bright capable talented person we keep throwing out.
“If I was fired tomorrow, I'd have served 95% of my commitment, but you've got to do the full 20 to get a pension. I would get nothing for my 19 years.”
Former US Air Force staff sergeant David Hall was dismissed for being gay eight years ago.
Since then he has worked with the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network to overturn the “don't ask, don't tell” policy.
“I served in the air force for five years, loading bombs and missiles on F-15 aircraft.
“They let me out so I could go into air force reserve officer training corps and come in as an officer.
“It was a two-year programme. After one year a female cadet went to my commander and told him I was gay.
“My boyfriend was also a cadet. He was friends with her. That's how she knew.
“She was a bad cadet. It was a way to get them to leave her alone and get them to focus on somebody else. When they say don't ask, don't tell, they mean don't tell anybody, ever.
“It is basically saying you are not supposed to have any friends, you are not even supposed to tell your family. It is ridiculous. They are basically telling you to lie about who you are.
“I was ranked number one in my class. I had a pilot's slot – I would have had the opportunity to fly.
“I was doing everything the air force asked. I was in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and south Korea. In return I got fired.
“My dad and my stepdad both served 20 years in the air force. Growing up around the air force I knew it was a good thing to do. I decided to follow in their footsteps.
“I would much rather be doing that still.
“The whole notion about unit morale cohesion being harmed is wrong. What really hurts unit cohesion and morale is to take somebody who is really good at their job and fire them.”

Source:BBC

Breast Cancer Awareness Month is marked by a number of quiet contradictions. Pink, a color which once connoted nave girlie softness, was reclaimed and is the symbol of women on a mission to stamp out breast cancer by any means necessary. We laugh with newly made friends as we participate in walks or runs for the cure with others who are also honoring their loved ones who were stolen by breast cancer.
This month is also an aggressive campaign to encourage women to get mammograms and screenings that will lead to early detection of breast cancer. Usually, the earlier breast cancer is detected, the greater the chances for survival. However, many women avoid visits to the doctor because the typical doctor’s visit–especially for women of color–is enough to make you sick.
Most visits begin with the front office staff treating you like a number. A nurse collects you from the waiting area and dumps you into an examination room where you wait 10, 20, 40 minutes to see the doctor. The physician’s questions are often asked in a routine and impersonal manner. Before you can ask your first question, your physician is off to see another patient. The insensitivity of the visit is enough for some to ignore the health providers’ recommendations, or worse, the patient may decide to never return for a follow up visit.
Certainly, there are medical professionals who give us their best and confirm that there are great doctors and nurses out there. Some call it good bedside manner. Others call it compassionate care. I call it strong Emotional Intelligence.
Emotional Intelligence is the ability to control the emotions of one’s self and of others in a way that allows for effective leadership. In an age when the business of health care seems to be squeezing the empathy out of patient care, Emotional Intelligence is an invaluable tool for helping medical professionals develop the trust and rapport that is necessary for creating a strong patient-provider relationship. EI consists of four core competencies–self management, social-awareness, self-awareness and relationship management– that are integral for quality patient care.
Just think, if the front desk clerk lacks the self-management skills to handle the stress of a busy waiting room and lashes out at a patient, that patient may leave before even being treated. If a male nurse lacks social-awareness skills, he probably will not notice when a Muslim woman patient seems uncomfortable when he grabs her arm to take her blood pressure. If the administrator lacks self-awareness, she may miss the solutions that grant unusual patient requests while still complying with hospital policy. And, if the doctor does not have the relationship management skills to ask questions that go beyond the textbook, he will probably not get an accurate medical history for the patient and might misdiagnose her.
When you add a layer of racial, ethnic and cultural differences between the health care professional and the patient, the chances for misunderstanding and miscommunication increase exponentially.
The Center for Studying Health System Change found, “Although differences in insurance coverage and other patient, community and health system factors contribute to disparities, studies indicate that disparities can arise during the patient-physician encounter.” Indeed, since 2001, The Commonwealth Fund has studied racial and ethnic differences in patient perceptions of bias and cultural competence and found that more black, Latino and Asian patients feel judged, looked down upon and misunderstood than their white counterparts. The Commonwealth Fund’s 2001 Health Care Quality Survey found that patients who reported being treated disrespectfully were less likely to follow a doctor’s advice or indefinitely postponed the medical care they need.
In part, the consequence of patients feeling unwelcomed by the medical community are health disparities drawn along racial lines. According to the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation, black women are less likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer, yet we are 38 percent more likely to die from the disease than white women. Based on research gathered by the Hispanic Health Council, Latinas are 33 percent less likely to have breast cancer than white women but they die from the disease at higher rates. The mortality rates for women of color are often attributed to being diagnosed and treated at later stages.
If we are truly going to encourage all women to proactively manage their health, our medical institutions have to do more than just open their doors. We must also eliminate the barriers to inclusion that can make patients feel like interlopers. Strong Emotional Intelligence skills, which are manifested by providing attentive health care, are essential pieces to the puzzle for eliminating breast cancer.

Follow Natalie Holder-Winfield on Twitter:
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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Single mothers are yummy. They are, and they deserve love. The thing is, that it really takes a certain kind of man to date a single mother.
Most of the time when you’re dating a single mother, you’re not the number one thing in her life. Her children are number one in her life.
As men, we always want to be number one in the life of the woman we’re dating. It’s important, especially in the beginning of a relationship when you’re building a foundation, to feel like you are number one in her life.
So let’s talk about dating single mothers.
Single mothers have less available time. Technically, you’re going to be on her schedule and not yours. So you’ve got to be very open to working within her schedule if you are going to date a single mother.
You’ve also have to deal with the single father when you’re dating a single mother. He might be that crazy guy who is behind the scenes feeling threatened by you hanging out with his ex-wife and kids.
A lot of single fathers are great fathers, but there are just as many deadbeat dads out there. There are just as many fathers who only show up sometimes and are unreliable.
Sometimes the children themselves are a challenge when you’re dating a single mother. A lot of my clients have emailed me in the past, and told me how they fallen in love with a woman but that her kid is a nightmare. The kid challenged them in every situation, and saw every guy who came around as a threat.
You’re going to have to befriend the child very slowly, and have a lot of patience. If you like this woman, it is a combination package. The woman comes with the kid, and there is no way around that.
Another thing about dating single mothers is their geographical inflexibility. If you meet a single mother who shares custody with her ex, then she is not going anywhere. If you have a dream of moving anywhere but there, it’s not going to happen (at least not with this woman).
So these are things you need to think about before you date a single mother. It’s really important.
Another issue is whether she wants more children. Some single mothers will feel like they have already had their share of children, and they don’t want anymore.
So if you desire to have children of your own, you may be out of luck if you date a single mother. You can’t convince someone to have kids, and it’s not your right to convince anyone to do so.
Single mothers are fantastic, but you have to understand all the things that go along with dating them. I personally have tried dating single mothers in the past, and it never worked for me because I found the kids to be too much of a challenge.
I never really wanted to be a step-dad, and I also didn’t want to deal with some of the drama that came up with the ex-husbands. Some of those men were not exactly the most well-behaved men in the world.
So before you date a single mother, think about it. There are lots of great ones out there, but you need to see if you’re ready for it.

Follow David Wygant on Twitter:
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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Being honest is a good starting point in building trust. – Sarah Palin
On a Barnes & Noble display table I came across yesterday, a short stack of the paperback edition of Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue.
(You know how at a Barnes and Noble, or at any big bookstore, they have all those books displayed on tables? No one who works at the store decided to put those books where they are. Book publishers pay a great deal of money to have their books so displayed. The closer the table is to the front of the store, the more it costs. Rather than honest recommendations, those books represent paid advertising space. Isn’t that… special?)
I’ve never before looked at Palin’s book. But in passing it yesterday, I noticed that on its cover, following Palin’s name, there was no “with” or “and.”
You know, as in “with Lynn Vincent,” or “and Lynn Vincent.” As in acknowledging Lynn Vincent, who was Palin’s co-author on the book.
Everyone in the book business knows that Lynn Vincent had a great deal to do with writing Going Rogue. And few if any of them at all sweat that; they all know that it’s practically unheard of for Famous People to write their own books. Writing is, after all, exceedingly difficult — so difficult, in fact, that it’s a given that no one has time to master writing and do whatever they did to make themselves famous enough for a publisher to gamble that they can make a lot of money from a book with their name and face on its cover.
Besides, who really cares about the writing of a book? That’s a detail handled readily enough. You can always hire someone (like me, actually) to tend to that for you.
Though a book’s denoted author and publisher might naturally enough care to downplay the fact that it had a co-author, they always at least acknowledge that co-author. You see it on the cover of countless books: [Famous Person -- in big type] with or and [person you've never heard of -- in small type]. (By the way, there’s a world of difference between that with and and. But… too much detail, I’m sure.)
If a publisher and author really want to hide a co-author’s involvement with a book, they can include the co-author’s name nowhere on the book besides its copyright page. But that’s the bare minimum acknowledgment. Outside of using invisible ink, there’s no lesser way to include a co-author’s name.
Lynn Vincent — who, again, was, shall we say, extremely instrumental in the writing of Going Rogue — didn’t even get that. Her name’s most definitely not on the book’s cover — and on the book’s copyright page (which you can view right here) it says nothing but “Copyright, 2009, Sarah Palin.”
That’s it. One author listed. (And that is the author’s call, by the way. If Palin wanted Lynn Vincent’s name on the cover or copyright page of her book, you can trust it would be there.)
It’s no secret that Lynn Vincent’s writing was literally indispensable to Going Rogue. While Vincent was working on that book, she and I were both on the “faculty” of a Christian writer’s conference. She was the full-on rock star of that conference: she was collaborating on Sarah Palin’s much-awaited book!
She actually knew Sarah Palin! In fact, she had actually left being holed up with Palin to attend the conference! Sarah Palin was actually waiting for her to get back!
Can you imagine what that’s like to a bunch of would-be (Christian) authors? People were positively swooning around Ms. Vincent, who seemed a nice person. Very sweet.
She did, however, tell us in no uncertain terms that she wasn’t free to say much if anything about Going Rogue. She intimated that its publisher had made it very clear she’d be in hot water if she did.
Here is Lynn Vincent’s personal Web site, which she uses to promote her services as a co-author.
The most famous book she’s ever worked on — one of the best-selling books in the country — isn’t even listed.
I’m no particular fan of Sarah Palin’s; I think she’s no more suited for public office than I am to being a prison guard. And if she ever gets elected to anything more than winkin’ slogan-slinger, I’d be very happy to be proven wrong about that.
But this is a woman who sells herself on how forthright, and morally upstanding she is. And yet, she’s very clearly done virtually all she can to take full credit for a book she didn’t even write — that’s all about her.
Palin has a new book out next month: America By Heart: Reflections on Family, Faith and Flag. It “celebrates the enduring strengths and virtues that have made this country great.”
Though acknowledging that America by Heart will have a collaborating writer, this time around HarperCollins (who also did Going Rogue) is keeping entirely mum about that writer’s identity.
They do, however, assure us that the book is written in Palin’s “own refreshingly candid voice.”
****
Go rogue, and join/”like” my Facebook fan page.

Follow John Shore on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/johnshore

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

*F.U. = Fair Use
Glenn Beck is a brilliant propagandist. There’s no denying he has mastered every technique passed down from the ages of those who would confuse and mislead the public. From the snide inflections of his voice to the baseless accusations, to just making things up, he is the latest to follow in a long, if disreputable, tradition.
Jonathan McIntosh is a brilliant remix artist. From his web site, www.rebelliouspixels.com, he generates gems like Buffy vs. Edward, which combines two of the well-known vampire worlds of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Twilight, and “So You Think You Can Be President,” a mash-up of “So You Think You Can Dance” with the 2008 presidential debates. McIntosh’s work is notable not only for the imagination to frame his remixes, but also for the painstaking technical work in making certain that the pieces all fit together – the characters appear to be talking to each other, or reacting to each other – seamlessly.
The fates of these two diverse creators of fiction intersect with McIntosh’s newest project, “Right Wing Radio Duck.” Both Beck and McIntosh showcase their talents. Beck throws around his threats, insults and mischaracterizations of McIntosh, Disney and fair use, showing he understands none of them. McIntosh creates a fabulous remix.
Here is how McIntosh describes his video:
The video premiered at the fabulous Open Video Alliance conference in New York a couple of weeks ago and quickly went viral – so viral, in fact, that Beck himself felt compelled to comment on it during his Oct. 4 radio broadcast.
One could write a book about what Glenn Beck doesn’t know (in fact, someone just did), and of course Jon Stewart did his fabulous take-down of Beck earlier this year. But his response to the McIntosh video is worthy of a close look because in just a few words, Beck shows what he is all about, and that he has no concept of fairness, or of fair use.
In his response, Beck takes a nonsensical shot at McIntosh and at the government:
He also promises: “And we’ll find out if it’s been federally funded, you know, as part of the stimulus package, or one of those NEA packages the White House is simultaneously involved in and not involved in.”
So it’s a question whether the Obama Administration is out to get him using Federal funding to a remix artist? All the stimulus grants for film given out by the National Endowment for the Arts are online. No remixers here, although it would be nice if some of them got some money. No one from the Beck program has asked McIntosh about it, either. It would be nice to check these things out before making accusations. And even if McIntosh (or any other remixer) received government funds, there’s nothing wrong with that. Certainly McIntosh’s vid about the presidential debates took shots at both candidates. And then there’s the fact that McIntosh notes on his web site that he doesn’t make money from his remixes, and asks for donations. The remixes are a hobby, albeit one that takes a lot of time, energy and talent.
Then Beck takes shots at Disney and at the concept of fair use, not doing justice to either:
“Of course it’s all fair use so they can use Disney. Apparently Disney doesn’t have a problem with Donald Duck cartoons now being remixed and politicized for the progressive left. I know a lot about Walt Disney. I know how much he hated the union bosses because he thought they were communists. I know how much Disney hated the enemies of this country and the constitution, namely, the communists, the socialists, the union organizers, dare I say it, the progressives. But, apparently, they don’t have a problem with this. I guess it’s all fair use.”
The idea that Disney somehow approves of the remix of its work is simply ludicrous. Disney, despite its history of appropriating fairy tales and old books for its animated features, is a copyright maximalist of the first rank.
It’s a standing joke that you know the term of copyright will be extended when the copyright on Mickey Mouse is about to run out. We can thank Disney for the 1998 copyright extension law that tacked another 50 years onto copyright terms that were life of the author plus 50 years, or for corporate works, 75 years just a few years before Disney copyrights were due to expire. Disney even sued a day care center for having its cartoon characters on the center’s walls.
The reason Disney can’t do anything about McIntosh’s is the protection of fair use, a limitation in copyright law that allows reuse of material without permission. The law says fair use of material for “criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright.”
In evaluating a fair use claim, a court would take into account factors such as: the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purpose; the nature of the copyrighted work; the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; the effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work.
Fair use has nothing to do with Disney’s politics and everything to do with intellectual creativity and the idea of “the commons” – that some uses of intellectual property belong to everyone, much as natural resources do and that private attempts to lock down culture ultimately harm society as a whole. David Bollier, a co-founder of my day-job employer Public Knowledge, has released a new video, “This Land Is Our Land: The Fight to Reclaim the Commons,” which sets out quite clearly the threats to the public good from the encroachment of commercial interests. His book, “Brand Name Bullies: The Quest To Own And Control Culture,” has many more horror stories, like music publishers suing Girl Scouts for songs sung around the campfire.
McIntosh with his video featuring Donald Duck and Glenn Beck has clearly created a transformative, non-commercial work that enhances the public culture while not affecting the value of either cartoon character.

Follow Art Brodsky on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/artbrodsky

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

First posted at thenation.com
With each passing week, I hear from football fans saying that it’s getting harder to like the game they love. They’ve spent years reveling in the intense competition and violent collisions so central to the sport, but this is the first time these NFL diehards feel conscious about what happens to players when they become unconscious.
In August, to much fanfare, NFL owners finally acknowledged that football-related concussions cause depression, dementia, memory loss and the early onset of Alzheimer’s disease. Now that they’ve opened the door, this concussion discussion is starting to shape how we understand what were previously seen as the NFL’s typical helping of off-field controversy and tragedy. When Denver Bronco wide receiver Kenny McKinley committed suicide, the first questions were about whether football-related head injuries led to the depression that took his life. When the recently retired Junior Seau drove his car off of a cliff the day after being arrested for spousal abuse, questions about whether head injuries sustained during a twenty-year career affected his actions, soon followed. Such conjecture is not only legitimate; it’s necessary and urgent.
This season a typical NFL game is starting to look like a triage center. On concussions alone, a reader at deadspin.com [1] compiled the following list of players who have borne the brunt of a brain bruise in 2010:
PRESEASON: Ryan Grant, Hunter Hillenmeyer, Joseph Addai, Mark Clayton, Nick Sorensen, Aaron Curry, DJ Ware, Louis Murphy, Scott Sicko, Mike Furrey, Darnell Bing, Freddy Keiaho
WEEK 1: Kevin Kolb, Stewart Bradley, Matt Moore, Kevin Boss, Charly Martin
WEEK 2: Clifton Ryan, Jason Witten, Randall Gay, Craig Dahl, Zack Follett, Evan Moore
WEEK 3: Anthony Bryant, Cory Redding, Jason Trusnik
WEEK 4: Jordan Shipley, Willis McGahee, Jay Cutler, Asante Samuel, Riley Cooper, Sherrod Martin
WEEK 5: Aaron Rodgers, Darcy Johnson, Jacob Bell, Landon Johnson, Demaryius Thomas, Rocky McIntosh
WEEK 6: Josh Cribbs, Desean Jackson, Mohamed Massaquoi, Zack Follett, Chris Cooley
In assessing the list, the most striking aspect is its randomness. There is a mix of star quarterbacks, shifty running backs, burly tight ends and anonymous linemen. All play different roles in the game, and all wear different kinds of equipment.
Sports Illustrated writer Peter King, after a weekend where he says he saw “six or eight shots where you wondered, ‘Is that guy getting up?’” proposed some solutions [2]: “It’s time to start ejecting and suspending players for flagrant hits…. Don’t tell me this is the culture we want. It might be the culture kids are used to in video games, but the NFL has to draw a line in the sand right here, right now, and insist that the forearm shivers and leading with the helmet and launching into unprotected receivers will be dealt with severely. Six-figure fines. Suspensions. Ejections.”
King’s suggestions are not unlike those who told 1950s children to hide under their desks case of nuclear attack. The hits that cause concussions aren’t just the kind of helmet-to-helmet collisions that make King shudder but often come from routine tackles. Frequently, brain bruises aren’t even diagnosed until the game has ended. In other words the most devastating hits are often the most pedestrian. This was seen in utterly tragic fashion during Saturday’s college contest between Rutgers University and Army. Rutgers linebacker Eric LeGrand was paralyzed from the waste down on a play described as a “violent collision [3].” But if you look at the replay, [3] the only thing “violent” about the play is its horrific outcome.
It’s also not, as King writes, “the culture” that celebrates this violence. It’s the NFL itself. The video games that the NFL promotes and sponsors deliriously dramatize brutal tackles. Highlight shows on the NFL Network relish the moments when players get “jacked up.” Anyone who saw HBO’s Hard Knocks, their behind-the-scenes look at the New York Jets preseason, heard it loud and clear. Whenever a player would “jack-up” the opposition, Coach Rex Ryan would whoop and yell, “That’s a guy who wants to make this team!”
Here’s the reality check to Peter King and all who want their violence safely commodified for Sunday: there is no making football safer. There is no amount of suspensions, fines or ejections that will change the fundamental nature of a sport built on violent collisions. It doesn’t matter if players have better mouth guards, better helmets or better pads. Anytime you have a sport that turns the poor into millionaires and dangles violence as an incentive, well, you reap what you sow.
It is what it is. I think it’s a waste of time to feel “guilty” about being a football fan. If people are disgusted by the violence visited on these players, they should vote with their feet and stop watching. If people are at peace with the fact that they are enjoying something that wrecks people’s bodies, then that’s their business as well. But for goodness sakes: if you are to remain a football fan, at least support the players in their upcoming negotiations with ownership. Reject the idea of an eighteen-game season as “good for the game.” Reject the idea that players need to have their pay cut for the league’s “financial health.” Reject the idea that owners shouldn’t have to contribute to the medical well-being of players after they retire. Recognize the humanity of the carnage on the field so you can do something to support the humanity of players when the pads come off. That’s what I pledge to do… for now. But in the interests of full disclosure: I might be a Desean Jackson-Dunta Robinson momen [4]t away from ditching the game for good.
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Source URL: http://www.thenation.com/blog/155457/nfl-violence-comes-head
Links:
[1] http://deadspin.com/
[2] http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2010/writers/peter_king/10/17/mmqb/index.html?eref=sihp
[3] http://sports.espn.go.com/new-york/ncf/news/story?id=5696563
[4] http://deadspin.com/5666097/heres-video-of-the-desean-jackson-hit

Follow Dave Zirin on Twitter:
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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Everyone is in favor of protecting our environment, but there are those who take the matter too far, and jeopardize fundamental freedoms in the process. I’m speaking specifically of a piece by Stephanie Simon in the Wall Street Journal of October 18, 2010 entitled “The Secret to Turning Consumers Green, It isn’t Financial Incentives. It isn’t More Information. It’s Guilt.”
Among other things, the piece discusses and advocates measures such as a Washington D.C. ordinance that imposes a 5 cent fee on paper or plastic bags furnished by retail stores, and requires that the bags be specifically requested. This is an effort to embarrass consumers in front of their peers for their lack of environmental awareness. District Councilman Tommy Wells is quoted as saying “It’s more important to get in their heads than in their pocketbooks.”
The article concludes with an admonition from a psychologist that “We can move people to environmentally friendly behavior by simply telling them what those around them are doing.”
In our household, we’re most concerned about the environment and put that concern into effect by seeking to recycle or reuse everything from grocery bags to dishwater, and carry canvas tote bags to market, and encourage others to do likewise, but on a voluntary basis.
Seeking to “nudge” people into “correct”, socially beneficial behavior all sounds so innocent and pure… until we consider the likely longer term implications for our freedom. If stores want to charge for bags, that’s their business and we can either pay or go elsewhere, just as we see in the airline industry with baggage fees. I also have no problem with government genuinely informing people of what others are doing. What worries me is the idea of government seeking to force people to conserve with public shaming tactics or worse.
I shouldn’t be surprised that we’re hearing about such an ordinance in Washington D.C. in view of the other onerous mandates coming from there, such as ObamaCare. I have real problems with government seeking to single out citizens for shame or ridicule for engaging in entirely lawful behavior, simply because some in government prefer that they not do so. As we have seen in countries such as the Soviet Union, Cuba, China and Cambodia, governments often start out with seemingly benevolent measures for the greater good, and gradually or suddenly become much more repressive, especially insofar as they enlist citizens to spy and inform on one another.
Certainly, making people ask for paper bags shouldn’t be equated to Gulag statism, and I’m not saying that it is. What I am saying is that the ‘end justifying the means’ is an extremely dangerous rationale, and that as citizens we need to be alert to its misuse. I don’t want my government in the name of environmentalism or any other cause intentionally trying to shame citizens out of doing anything, especially something that is clearly lawful on its face. The same goes for ‘deputizing’ or encouraging citizens to do this with other citizens.
As noted in the Christian Science Monitor, http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2010/0806/Will-government-help-hurt-electric-cars-like-the-Chevy-Volt, I’m also skeptical about the efficacy of such coercive efforts, and feel that market-based mechanisms yield superior results. It’s disturbing that we seem to be moving from economic incentives to use electric vehicles, to more coercive measures to facilitate conservation.
It’s too dangerous to rely upon such efforts being limited in scope after their limited implementation. Far too many bureaucrats start to believe their own rhetoric about the social benefit of their activities and use this belief to justify ever-more coercive measures, going way beyond nominal fees or disclosure of consumer behavior. I’m not, and it doesn’t take, a Tea Party stalwart to recognize the vast expansion of government power which has occurred in recent years. Many feel that this expansion is antithetical to our economic growth and the upcoming elections will be a referendum on this belief. As bad as many feel that recent measures are, I think that formally enlisting peer pressure for this purpose opens a new front in the struggle to preserve personal liberty.
Environmental protection is very important for our long term survival. However, personal liberty protection is equally important, and dictates that we vigorously resist efforts to enlist Americans as informers or enforcers against each other. We need to find methods to preserve both our environment and our liberty.

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

I could have been Asher Brown, Seth Walsh, Tyler Clementi or any of the other teens that recently ended their young, precious lives. I grew up in the 1970s when being gay was still considered to be a mental illness by some. I would go to sleep hoping not to wake up, simply because I liked men. While much has changed over the last 30 years, feelings of isolation remain, much of it brought on by peers.
Like those boys and so many others, I was bullied in school. I guess my locker had some pheromone that attracted people that hated people that were somewhat different, because in the first week of 7th grade a kid scraped the word “fag” on my locker with something sharp like a pocket knife or a nail. Even though I could only see that word when I fumbled with the combination, the sadness and loneliness that the word made me feel lingered in the back of my mind every day of those horrific three years, a feeling that continued until I finally came out publicly on television in 1993. This one act and other daily forms of abuse by my classmates changed my life and my ability to learn and participate in friendships and relationships. The fear that I had because I was different was so strong it convinced me not to attend college; I was not prepared for what the repercussions might be if people knew I was gay.
When I was in my 30s and starting to act, I was completely guarded with my secret, convinced I had to suppress it and pretend it was non-existent. It was so detrimental to me that I only wanted to be with other “professional” actors, where I felt safe. Where I knew that as long as I was in this box of mine, life was going to be safer. “Just DON’T be yourself.” That’s what I believed and in doing so, I missed so many potential experiences and relationships that I will never know what could have been.
I regret not having the experience of going though the same things at the same time as my peers. Folks often say, “You can go to college now.” Of course, it wouldn’t be the same. I often travel to universities to do stand-up or lecture, and I learn so much just being around students, faculty and members of gay-straight alliances. Recently, after a performance, I had a good cry when I was back in my hotel because I had been in the presence of these students who are not afraid of being out and accepting who they are. It impressed me immensely.
When I was 21, I made a call to a suicide prevention lifeline because I realized I needed help. I was starting to have thoughts of suicide and I needed someone to stop me, to save my life. I began seeing a counselor after that, who I knew kept everything confidential, but even with my back to her chair, I sat there and lied that I was bi-sexual, uncomfortable to even speak the truth to a professional. It was too hard and I was afraid for my life.
Career-wise, I wanted to be an actor while some in the industry would say I was “too light in the loafers.” Memories of all these kids who beat me up and humiliated me all through school came back to me repeatedly in my early years of pursuing my career. Being afraid of people and re-learning how to trust them is a daily reminder of where and how far I have come.
Now I am an actor, a comedian and an advocate for equality. I have been able to get past my childhood and work in my chosen profession. I also have been able to give back to my community by being chair of the Screen Actors Guild National LGBT Actors Committee and a mentor for LifeWorks, which supports LGBTQ youth between the ages of 12-24. I have also produced and performed in a comedy benefit for the past five years to raise money for these kids and to show them there is hope out there.
Doing service for others and accepting the support of others has been my way of healing. I have been able to overcome my feelings of not being “enough.” I came to realize that the thoughts in my head are just that and can go out as easily as they entered those many years ago. I can create a new life story by which to live my life. It’s 2010 and I don’t have to be that kid in the 1970s who was abused and suicidal anymore. I often wish I could take that kid by the hand and show him the life I have now and tell him, “It will get better. I’m someone. Someone with a life and someone that matters. Just like you do.”

Follow Jason Stuart on Twitter:
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Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

TERRE HAUTE, IND. — Despite poll numbers firmly in his favor, a growing campaign chest and the withdrawal of Democratic funding from ads supporting his opponent, Indiana 8th District Republican candidate Larry Bucshon says he’s not resting until the election is over.
“I feel very optimistic about our position in the race,” Bucshon said in an interview after a campaign rally with Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., in Terre Haute, Ind., Saturday. “The message we’ve carried across the district has grabbed hold of a lot of people, and it’s the right message for this district.”
But, he added, “The only poll that counts is election day Nov. 2. I’m not taking anything for granted.”
About 100 people, including about 50 who arrived on the Mike Pence Road Team bus, attended the morning rally at the Vigo County Fairgrounds.
Two straw polls conducted this week in communities in the so-called “Bloody 8th,” known for its contentious elections, put Bucshon ahead of Democrat Trent Van Haaften. The Brazil Times poll had Bucshon at 53.8 percent to Van Haaften’s 26.9 percent, and the Greene County Daily World put the numbers at 41.3 percent for Bucshon and 28.2 percent for Van Haaften.
A mid-September poll conducted by On Message for the National Republican Campaign Committee placed Bucshon ahead of Van Haaften, 41 percent to 20 percent.
Bucshon received more good news Friday in the form of new Federal Election Commission statistics indicating he raised almost $298,000 in the third quarter ending Sept. 30 and had close to $320,000 cash on hand, while Van Haaften raised $215,000 and had $259,000 on hand. In all, Bucshon has raised more than $815,000 and Van Haaften almost $700,000, according to the FEC.
Bucshon said the overriding issue he’s heard about from constituents as he has traveled the district is unemployment.
“I think not only Republicans in Indiana, but also Democrats are concerned about the direction the country’s heading in,” he said. “Democrats in the 8th District are conservatives. They’re concerned about spending.”
Bucshon said the withdrawal of Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee funding from ads supporting Van Haaften is an indication that his message is getting through to voters — and to Democrats
“They have other races they perceive as being closer, especially incumbent races, and they need the money there,” he said.
Bucshon said he had no involvement with recent ads attacking Van Haaften that were paid for by the National Republican Congressional Committee and an independent group called Americans for Job Security.
“We appreciate any conservative thinkers who are trying to help us, but we’re focusing on our campaign,” he said.
He said funding by outside groups such as Americans for Job Security is not a new phenomenon.
“It’s been happening for many years on both sides of the aisle,” he said. “It’s free speech, and we don’t have any control over it.”
Americans for Job Security has ties to former Bush strategist Karl Rove, with whom Bucshon attended a fundraiser in Chicago in late September.
Being associated with high-profile names such as Rove and Sarah Palin, whose political action committee, Sarah PAC, gave $3,500 to Bucshon’s campaign in June, is no different than Van Haaften’s association with groups and individuals who raise money for his campaign, Bucshon said.
“It’s not directing our message,” Bucshon said. “It’s part of the process, and we appreciate the support.”

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

A US court has sentenced a Jordanian man to 24 years in prison for attempting to blow up a skyscraper in Dallas, Texas.
Hosam Smadi, aged 20, pleaded guilty in May to one count of attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction in 2009.
Just before being sentenced in Dallas, Smadi addressed the court, saying he was “very sorry for my actions”.
Smadi was arrested in September 2009, after he was ensnared in an undercover FBI operation.
“I'm so ashamed for what I did. I could not live with myself if I had hurt anybody,” he told the court in Dallas on Tuesday.
He also renounced al-Qaida, calling its leader Osama Bin Laden “a bad man”.
Smadi earlier admitted leaving what he thought was a truck bomb in a garage beneath the 60-floor Fountain Place building in 2009.
He said he then used a mobile phone to activate the bomb.
The FBI says the public was never in danger as Smadi had been under constant surveillance and a decoy device had been supplied to the suspect.
He was held immediately after he tried to set off the device.
Smadi had faced up to life in prison, but his sentence was reduced because of his guilty plea.

Source:BBC

President Barack Obama has said Venezuela has the right to develop a peaceful nuclear energy programme, but must “act responsibly”.
Mr Obama was reacting to news Russia is to build a nuclear power plant there as part of a series of energy deals.
Mr Obama said he hopes to improve US-Venezuela relations and said the US has no interest in increasing tensions.
Meanwhile, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez met Iranian leaders for talks expected to focus on energy.

The US military has started accepting gay recruits after a California judge last week struck down the “don't ask, don't tell” policy barring openly gay people from serving.
But the US defense department says new gay recruits are warned the repeal of the law may be overturned.
The Pentagon is appealing against the decision and has asked the judge to reinstate the ban in the interim.
Judge Virginia Phillips on Monday tentatively refused that request.

Conservatives always seem to get a rise out of gay marriage and while attempts to legalize it in California have fallen limp (for now), leave it to a pair of creative, industrious lesbians to pave the way for rethinking marriage, in general.
Artists Annie Sprinkle and Elizabeth Stephens, who became a couple earlier this decade and were legally married in a same-sex wedding ceremony in Canada in 2007, seem to be asking: Shouldn’t marriage be considered “art?” (As in an art project?)
Judging by what the duo have engaged in over the past six years, the answer seems to be: Hell Yes!
Sprinkle and Stephens, both artists and educators — well, and environmental activists, too — are in the thick of a seven-year art project dubbed Love Art Lab, which finds the couple exchanging vows to each other annually in intriguing performance art ceremonies that often bring a community of creative souls — and onlookers — together. Each wedding event has a theme and a color/chakra scheme. This year, year six, is devoted to the color purple — the two woman will marry each other (symbolically) to the moon. But other ideals are explored here. The color purple represents the sixth chakra and the artists hope to illuminate the importance of intuition.
In their artists’ statement this year, they note that they invite everyone to “share our practice of loving the Moon and the Mountains romantically in order to create more intimate relations with them” and “aim to activate a network of global citizens, artists, activists, sexologists, spiritual practitioners, academics, local folk, family and others.”
Bottom line: This is not your father’s “Purple Mountain Majesty.”
But it’s destined to be majestic. The big event takes place in the early evening Saturday, Oct. 23 at Farnsworth Park Amphitheater in L.A. It will be officiated by the enlightening attention-grabber Reverend Billy with the Church of Life After Shopping Choir on hand.
I participated in 2008′s Green Wedding up at the UC Santa Cruz campus in California. The grand event had an environmental theme and seemed to further push these ladies into going beyond the issue of gay marriage, but to explore the state of the environment. On a deeper level, they are exploring how their union/love/commitment to each other can be used as a springboard for activism and creating a positive ripple effect in the world.
Needless to say, their efforts never cease to turn heads.
In fact, just last week, the couple faced some unexpected drama when the deputy director of the L.A. County Parks and Recreation Department called them to inform them that their Farnsworth Amphitheater rental contract (in Atladena) had been cancelled. Shocked, the pair felt it was a direct response to the gender of the “brides,” and the environmental activist themes of their vows.
No worries. Reverend Billy, who is officiating this purple wedding, came to the rescue. “It is bad enough that same sex marriage is illegal in California but now even the performance of a same sex marriage is called un-safe,” he commented upon hearing the news. The Rev and his wife Savitri D. consulted their own legal team to help the brides.
So… the wedding is back on!
In the meantime, a few more lovely things to note about what, I feel, has to be one of the most inventive, titillating, ecosexual-civil rights estrogen parades to penetrate modern culture in decades: The video below gives you a better glimpse of the artists’ causes. Below that, dive into a slideshow weddings from year’s past (Photos courtesy of Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens)
To learn more or to become part of the artists’ causes, visit this kickstarter link.
Here’s to another year of “I Do.”
2005: The RED Wedding
1 of 8
Highlights This Week: From Caves To Skin
Jonas Mekas, Carolee Schneeman and Ken Jacobs in Avant-Garde Film Festival
Tribute To Opera Legend Dame Joan Sutherland In The Event Of Her Death At 83 (VIDEOS)
Spotlight: Sen Curran’s Left Exit
Divine Design: 15 Books From Factories To Femmes Fatales
Film Spotlight: Ronald Krauss’ Amexica
In 2005, Annie Sprinkle (left) and Beth Stephens begin a seven-year art project dubbed “Love Art Lab,” which finds the two partners getting married each year in performance art ceremonies. Each year, each wedding, has its own theme and color.
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Follow Greg Archer on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/chroniccharlie

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

The word: Feariness
A lot of punditry take various players to task for using fear. Using it to garner votes. Using it to garner sales or sell papers or increase ratings. Using it to garner support for a wide variety of causes or ideologies.
This denigrates fear… the real kind… the well-founded concern about actual threats that helps us stay healthy and alive. To take from Gordon Gecko, Fear is Good. To be sure, too much fear, or too little, can certainly be a problem… what, in How Risky Is It, Really? Why Our Fears Don’t Always Match the Facts, I call the Perception Gap that can lead to new risks all by itself. We do have to fear fear itself… too much or too little. But we also have to fear the way the pundits and manipulators give fear a bad name. So in that vein, and with due acknowledgment to Steven Colbert, “that brings us to tonight’s word.”
Feariness
There are two kinds of fear. The real kind. And feariness.
They’re easy enough to tell apart. The real kind of fear is the fear that keeps you safe. (From what, Steven? Bears?)
Safe from fanatics who want to impose their religion on America. (Glenn Beck?)
Safe from those who would weaken America by unpatriotically attacking the president at a time of war. (Dick Cheney?)
Safe from those who attack our constitution with their own interpretation of the law of the land. (Scalia, Roberts, Thomas?)
Real fear is the kind that protects us from those who would take our jobs. (Hey Steven, who mows your lawn?)
Real fear is the kind that protects us from violent criminals (Is that a .38 special in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?)
Real fear keeps us strong enough so we’re willing to send our brave men and women into battle to keep us safe. (WMD? What WMD?)
Then there’s the other kind of fear… the fake kind… feariness. The kind the Patrons of Panic throw at us to get us all riled up about trumped up threats when there’s no threat there at all. (Climate Change?)
You know, the false fear the doomsayers use to attract members and money to their do-gooder organizations, freaking us about their pet peeves, trying to get us all worked up over nothing. (Poverty, hunger, illiteracy, racism)
There are a ton of them, these hucksters, trying to get us so worked up we’ll do and say anything they want us to. Buy any product, vote for any candidate, support any cause, in the name of keeping ourselves safe. (How about next time we try real diplomacy first and invasion second.)
Or the greedy fear-meisters in the press and punditry who say they are just trying to keep us informed, when all they care about is sell papers or boosting their ratings or their personal careers (Uh, careful there, Big Guy!)
We shouldn’t be taken in by that kind of feariness, fake fear about non-threats a boy scout could solve while he’s earning his Merit Badge. (Global deforestation, ocean dead zones, industrial chemicals in our blood).
Feariness that preys on our emotions and drives us into angry polarized tribes supportive of people like ourselves but threatened by anybody else. (Mission Accomplished!)
Trumped-up fear that makes us so afraid we’ll turn into a bunch of sheep and follow the Pied Pipers of Panic right off a cliff. (See you at the Keep Fear Alive rally!)
It’s time to stand up in defense of real fear. Stand up against Feariness.
A nation of namby pambies whining about every two-bit bogeyman is just a second-rate nation of Chicken Littles. A nation righteously worried about all those others who would do us real harm… that’s a nation scared of the right things.
Be afraid, America! A scared nation is a strong nation. Just remember what Geena Davis-as-Veronica Quaife said in The Fly; Be afraid! Be very afraid!

Follow David Ropeik on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/dropeik

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Seven years ago, a candidate for California governor emerged with an appealing message.
After a successful career as an action film star, this gubernatorial hopeful pegged himself as a political outsider. Claiming to run the government like a business, this candidate declared himself void of special interest influence and argued the state needed a fresh perspective. Californians elected him wholeheartedly.
Two terms later, Governor Schwarzenegger’s approval rating has sank to a mere 22 percent. The state is in shambles, facing record unemployment and imminent debt. The legislature recently squeaked out a budget–four months late.
Enter Meg Whitman. Armed with the same throng of Republican consultants Arnold engaged during his run, eMeg is dominating airwaves and stump speeches with a familiar claim that California needs an outsider with a business executive’s sensibility to lead us toward better times.
It’s befuddling just how similar her campaign rhetoric is until looking at the list of strategists on eMeg’s payroll. Of her record-shattering $140 million campaign, $14 million of the pot has been doled out on the same folks who advised Arnold.
You’d think someone with eMeg’s self-proclaimed business sensibility would have the good sense to spend her fortune on consultants who do more than mold her into Governator Part Deux. But she’s insistent on portraying herself a certain way, thus exposing Californians to the same empty words they heard during the early aughts.
Don’t just take my word for it. Behold the identical campaigns below.

Follow Carly Schwartz on Twitter:
www.twitter.com/carlicita

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com

Throughout human history, every successful person who has walked this earth has shared and left behind secrets about the path to success and what it actually means. I have found there to be a common theme in the lives of these people, and by the way, the odds were not always in their favour. Success to these people had nothing to do with money at all but a deep inner joy of using their true gifts to make a contribution to the world at large. They knew that in order for success to be found and lived, they had to tread on a path of unconventional means. They were not interested in living a life that the masses wanted or coveted. They wanted to create original lives, and they wanted to be originals. Whether they knew exactly what they were destined to contribute or not was not their primary concern — they were after passionate engagement. Finding their mission and life’s work fuelled their souls and hearts on a daily basis. To be engaged in work that totally consumes you and excites you is one of the secrets of success. Your soul cannot feel passionate about working in an office if that is not your true calling. The soul cannot be mocked, and your discontent is your soul telling you that there is something else that you need to look for or find.
Unfortunately, the society that we live in reinforces the belief that you can’t make money doing what you love but rather earning money doing something that you have no passion for. This paradox paralyses many people, and suffice it to say that they never move in the direction of the heavenly stars. This belief, of course, is an illusion. History is full of extraordinary individuals who followed their bliss and ended up living lives beyond their imagination. Success is not an easy grade to pass — it begins in the mind, followed by the right attitude, then action, and before you know it, the heavens will open up to you. Bear in mind the words of Albert Schweitzer: “I don’t know what your destiny will be, but I do know one thing: the only ones among you who will be happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.”
I’m sure you’ve heard of the saying, “Luck is when preparation meets opportunity.” If destiny brings you the opportunity and you are not prepared to meet it halfway, then luck will pass you by as if you were a stranger. Positive thinking is a muscle, a muscle of the spirit that must be disciplined and utilized to work in our favour. Just stating a few positive mantras does not transform a mindset that has indulged in negativity for 30 or 40 years. Just as bodybuilders have to spend years conditioning their body and mind to produce exactly the physique they desire to win a championship, so it is with the mind.
Once at a party I heard someone quoting Randall D. Worley, which left an impression on me for many years: “Being broke is a temporary situation. Being poor is a state of mind”.
Do you have a poor state of mind? A poverty mindset always sees the cup as half-empty, and therefore has nothing to do with how much money we make or have. It is a cultivated disposition, and it can be transformed. The reason we see the cup as half-empty is because we’re not using our full capacity or potential. Each one of us has a reservoir of creativity, ideas, skills, knowledge that we have at our disposal if only we tap into it. Lao-Tsu said it best: “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”.
Are you doing what you love? Any new undertaking or journey or endeavour requires that first crucial step, and your focus should not be on how far you have to go but on actually taking that first step towards your dreams. You would be amazed at how things will flow for you and how the journey of a thousand miles in actuality becomes effortless.
I will leave you with these words:

Source:www.huffingtonpost.com